Hi sorry if this is offtopic but it's the only place I know and have access to that some people will understand and not just downvote me & start arguing, criticising or mocking me.
The vegan reddit is apparently the largest online community of vegans; it's definitely the largest and most supportive one I know of, and that means it's the only real safe space I have to talk about issues I'm facing with likeminded people, of whom I know none in real life. (There is also the Vystopia reddit which is often even more understanding, apart from a few non-vegan trolls showing up occasionally once they discovered it. And a few other subs). I used the vegan reddit community as an outlet and support network to deal with and get help and advice for what is basically extreme depression/sadness, anxiety & stress, isolation & loneliness related to being the only vegan I know, the hate and bullying I get from non-vegans, and the difficulty accepting the fact that most people are so cold and callous when the topic of veganism and animal rights comes up (not that I usually bring it up myself, believe me); or what could all probably be summarised by the experience of vystopia, which even most mental health professionals are not familiar with or trained in since ethical vegans are such a minority.
This community is the only place I know of now to ask questions, get help or just vent about the struggles of being vegan in a carnist, speciesist and largely anti-vegan society. However the problem is that this community doesn't have that many vegans using it, and from what I've seen there are a lot of carnist trolls (and just non-vegans in general) who "brigade" the posts even when someone says they're just wanting to talk to likeminded vegans. This happens on Reddit too but the community is big enough, with enough vegans using it, that those comments get largely drowned out and even when they don't, there will be supportive vegans there to defend you, defend veganism/the animal rights position, correct misinformation, etc. I think there aren't enough people using Lemmy in general, to the point that when someone posts in this community, it's one of the only posts on "all" (or whatever the equivalent is) and so sometimes it seems like the majority of people seeing/engaging with it are non-vegans and trolls and it takes a while for the vegans to get here. I hope this is slowly changing as this community grows, but I wonder if there is a way to limit a post's exposure to non-vegans by having it only show up in this community and not "all"?
Anyway I'm posting here because I have no way of posting to Reddit since I was banned sitewide for unknown reasons. I sent multiple appeals to be unbanned or at least request to know the nature of my ban, as well as attempting to think of what could have possibly gotten me banned and acknowledging those things & promising to never do them again (it's a small and stupid list of things that wouldn't realistically warrant a sitewide ban like posting a few animal rights messages in topical posts of non-topical subreddits, or accidentally voting twice on the same comment a few times when switching accounts and forgetting). It really doesn't make any sense. I've sent heartfelt emails explaining my position to different places but never any response. I don't think they even accept appeals anymore after a few months.
With this in mind, I've given up hope that Reddit would ever hear my case and unban me and let them post or comment (or even like anything) ever again. So I don't know what else I can do besides trying to circumvent the ban somehow because I'm desperate, I feel like a crucial support network has been cut off that I rely upon for mental health support in a world where nearly no one understands what we're going through. I've tried VPNs, Tor browsers, using different devices, new accounts of course, but somehow it always connects back to me via IPs, accounts, data trails or something and figures out who I am and bans any new account I try to create after a short period of time (less than a day, sometimes instantly).
Any advice would be much appreciated, and I know this isn't really the kind of community that would know what to do about this issue, but if I said it anywhere else, they would definitely refuse to help me unless I explained my reasoning, and then if I did they would just bully me and use it as an opportunity to diss veganism and tell me I deserve it for being vegan or whatever.
Thanks for the warm welcome! ๐
Yes, I suppose you're right that veganism would be more like atheism in its absence or rejection of a traditionally dominant belief system & its concomitant behaviors, if someone was simply vegan and didn't do any activism/advocacy/promoting or "evangelizing" or proselytizing, which has a less religious connotation (which, to be fair, is most vegans. You only hear about the activists or vocal vegans because, well, they want to be heard & want to spread the idea of veganism or the often esoteric information & evidence related to it with the masses).
In that sense the kind of veganism which doubles as not just a personal position but also an actively pushed social movement is kind of like a hybrid between atheism & abolitionism/social justice causes I guess? Unless you count anti-religious people who actively oppose & challenge religion in a kind of philosophic activism, also termed New Atheism, but that's not as much of a "social justice" movement as such, though it can be related to a defense of those causes when viewing religion as a threat to them.
I don't personally find it to be too strange or unreasonable for vegans to invent a term or terms to recognise and describe the ideology/ies we're either rejecting or actively opposed to (carnism, speciesism, human supremacy, anthropocentrism, etc - many of which pre-dated veganism & even weren't strictly born out of animal rights discussions but rather human psychology in general). If veganism is the absence of certain beliefs & practices, it makes sense to put a name to those beliefs & practices, no? Otherwise veganism remains a rather nebulous concept without a clear goal or reason, and can often seem like simply an idea or practice in itself rather than the dismantling of such. Doing so also helps to de-otherize veganism in a similar way to how terms like "cisgender" help to de-otherize transgenderism by establishing that the norm is in fact identifiable & describable in itself & does have its own clear set of characteristics. I'm happy to use "non-vegan" (which does contain the otherizing of veganism issue) in case the term carnism brings offence, but I would wager any offence it causes is likely to stem from the challenging nature of what it exposes & addresses, as it's quite literally just holding up a mirror to larger society's choices & attitudes with as much accuracy as possible, without any inherent judgment as a matter-of-fact descriptor (not that judgment can't be placed on it). Terms like this intend to foster honest discussions about the truth of our nature. If people don't like what they see (which to me indicates an acknowledgement of some tangible problem worth addressing that's separate from any word used to capture it), or take issue with the word used, they're free to propose a different term since that's not what's important, but the reality is there isn't another term to accurately describe the phenomenon really. Though it builds on ancient concepts, this kind of discussion itself in this form is rather recent & underdeveloped, and so the language used is, too.
To me the fact that the majority of people (which as we know are non-vegans) don't want to associate with the places in which discourse among vegans occurs, speaks more to people's resistance to the difficult ideas (or even facts) it raises & brings to light, or the contentions it makes, than it does the specific nature of those communities. I think it's inevitable and understandable that people hate vegans & seeing vegans discuss things as veganism poses a threat to their current way of life (a philosophical & moral threat at least, if not a physical one).
That said, there are all different kinds of vegans, and they're just people like anyone. Far from perfect, & flawed in many ways. So there are bound to be toxic vegans, especially on the internet, just as there are in any community or among people in general. I'm not sure that there's a higher prevalence of that phenomenon among vegans or vegan groups, and from my experience vegans are usually (not always) pretty civil with each other. The "drama" comes when talking with non-vegans, usually (not to claim whose fault that is, as it's probably brought about equally by both parties, or just a natural consequence of their fundamental value differences & how those ideas conflict, or rather are not aligned consistently, even if there is significant common ground).
However, I have to be honest that it seems a little wrong to me to suggest that veganism as a philosophy or ethical stance, as independent from any people who adopt or follow it, can be ruined by the actions of one vegan (or even any number of vegans). I'm sorry you feel this way though and I hope you're able to form a more positive impression of it, or rather the vegan community, by whatever means that may be possible. In my experience it's a pretty welcoming community to vegans or those who are ready to make the change to being vegan or are curious about it, but somewhat understandably (but still often regrettably) not so much toward those who argue against the vegan position or tend to defend their choices to "use" animals (for lack of a better way to summarize the behaviors). And, frankly, it seems unreasonable to me to take out your annoyance at what some humans did (vegan or not) on innocent non-human animals. Since your issue is with the vegans and not the deer (or whatever animals), the punishment there is being directed at the wrong individuals, no? Just some food for thought.
Hope I didn't upset you or anything, I was really just trying to be as sincere as I can ๐